King (a contributor to The Oregonian's book section) has a new book, "The Big Book of Spy Stuff," that contains a lot of interesting facts and snappy stories mixed in with the silliness. Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, really did come up with a plan called Operation Mincemeat that involved throwing a corpse with fake papers off a ship and tricking the Germans into thinking an invasion would take place in Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily. The CIA used to call its dog tranquilizers "puppy chow." In the summer of 1941, a spy named Dusan Popov warned J. Edgar Hoover about a Japanese plan to bomb Pearl Harbor.

James Brown's "This River" is a second memoir, after "The Los Angeles Diaries," that deals in a down-to-earth way with addiction and its subtle grip on a man's life. Brown is such a clean, honest writer that it's impossible not to be moved by his story or to pick out the best passages, although the ones about coaching his sons on the wrestling team are particularly moving.

Bruce Chatwin spent the summer of 1972 in Oregon, working on a book and staying in a cabin at Lake of the Woods owned by his friend, director James Ivory. Chatwin, author of "In Patagonia" and "The Songlines," liked to hike around naked, with flowers tied to his penis, and his observations on the local landscape and culture are those of someone who would think that's a good idea.

"Nearby there's a Shakespeare Festival of all things, the oldest in North America founded in the early twenties," Chatwin wrote. "The town Ashland is full of banks and hamburger joints got up to look like Ann Hathaway's cottage. Teenage girls float around with syllabub trays and if you want to eat there's always an English tart. 'It's sort of like a pecan pie, but we call it English tart. ...' The performance was horrendous. The women were like the daughters of the American revolution at a bridge party and the men all came from Texas and gassed about on phony hobby horses waving silk handkerchiefs at each other, shouting 'Hi ... yeee ...' I have refused an invitation to go to 'The Taming of the Shrew.'"

Alex Kuo has been publishing poetry for more than 50 years and has taught two generations of students, most notably Sherman Alexie, who credits Kuo as a major influence on his decision to become a writer. Kuo has a new book, "A Chinaman's Chance: New and Selected Poems 1960-2010," that is published by Wordcraft of Oregon and is an excellent introduction to his work. Kuo's website also has examples of his second artistic career, as a photographer.